November 6, 2008

• To be honest...

  A while ago I saw two little girls in the library arm in arm walking...somewhere and talking, smiling. They may have been sisters. They may have met just that day. Kids are notorious for making fast friends. In any case, I was moved to jealousy. I no longer feel like I have friends I can confide in completely. Not really. Not everything. Not those deep down dark things. Part of this stems from the fact the close friends I had, the two girls I used to cuddle up in one small bed with (in a purely non-sexual and non-male fantasy kind of way) and talk with, whine to, laugh at, confide in, are no longer in my immediate vicinity. I moved from Philadelphia, and while one of them is still there the other is out at Penn State also going to grad school. Out of sight out of mind they say. Additionally, we're all older now. People naturally separate, grow apart. All that good stuff. Mostly though, I no longer feel comfortable being 100% honest with either of them. With anyone really.

  My sister and I are fairly good friends. Not everyone can say that about their siblings. It certainly took some time, some getting over the teenage rivalry and petty bickering, which we still occasionally have. But for the most part I can count on her to be able to listen to the big things in my life, the things that scare me, and concern me. At the very least she usually seems to understand where I'm coming from. But she doesn't know everything. And sometimes I don't share the big things with her until much later. I didn't really tell her about my break up until...much later. Maybe a week. Maybe two. And we lived together. I still don't think I've really ever sat down with her and told her how I felt, what was really going on. But she's been supportive.

  I don't necessarily have any close friends where I live now. And I can't say I'm completely surprised. The older we get the less inclined we are to open ourselves up I think. The harder it is, more work I should say, to cultivate a relationship where we can feel comfortable enough to lean on someone's shoulder, or to look them in the eye after something particularly funny has happened and know that they think it's hilarious too. Part of my lack of close friends for the last two years has been due in part to laziness. To a reluctance to work, both at the friendships I have, and the ones I could potentially have. And part of it is a fear of just how non-good I am.

  I'm not a saint. I know that no one is. It's just, people tend to meet me and assume that I'm a lot nicer, a lot milder than I really am. Which, to be honest, I enjoy to some extent. Something about my glasses perhaps, or my demeanor maybe gives people a certain impression of me. And who am I to tell them otherwise? And yet, like every other human being we yearn to put off the acting and reveal ourselves, with the hopes, of course, of being accepted for that too. It's the moments when someone confesses to something, to a love of soap operas, or an extreme dislike of worms (hate them!!) and someone else goes "me too!" that we live for. Moments that show that despite how much of an individual we'd like to claim we are, we really want to know that we aren't islands living on our own planets. That didn't make any sense. But you know what I mean.

  Anyway. As it stands I can't be completely honest with anyone. But I suppose that's the nature of things. We share what we want to share with different people. Some people know some things about me, and the others different things. I suppose if I combined those people into one huge (and weird looking) person I'd have the perfect friend. But I'm not silly enough to believe in perfect. It's a self-defeating concept, a thing we use to define and compare other things in a mostly unfair manner. Perfect is, like anything else relative to who is doing the comparing.

  I suppose my goal should be to try to make friends in the library Wish me luck.

  • 8:10 pm
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